Sunday, May 13
May 13th was Mother’s Day in the United States. We wanted to send another Mother’s Day thank you to our wonderful mothers who have been following us on our blog and wondering what they did to raise such odd children. 😁 A special thanks is also appropriate to all our friends and family who are mothers, grandmothers, godmothers, stepmothers, aunts, sisters, etc. who are there every day helping to guide future generations. Your love and hard work are greatly appreciated. Remember, the youth of today will be working to pay our social security tomorrow!
We spent Sunday walking around on the Buda side of the Danube. The name Buda has an interesting etymology. In the fifth century the Huns conquered the Carpathian Basin and they named the City on the Western side of the River Bleda after the brother of their famous leader, Attila the Hun. Eventually the name evolved into the name we know today: Buda.
And speaking of names, we learned an interesting fact about names in Hungary. It seems there is a law requiring parents to name their children names from an official list. The name must be approved before the child can be named. So no Blanket or Apple or Moon Unit allowed. This law is probably more for the benefit of the child than the parents or society. 😉
Fun Fact: In Hungary names are always last name, first name. So their most famous composer, Franz Liszt, would be Liszt Frenec.
Our plan for the day was to visit the Citadel and, once we were hot and tired, to refresh ourselves at one of Budapest’s renowned bath houses. Budapest is famous for its thermal baths. It sits on a patchwork of over 100 thermal springs. The term ‘bath house’ has a bad connotation in the U.S. but in Europe it refers to spas that use natural mineral waters. If you’ve ever heard the term, “take the waters”, it refers to European style spas.
We walked over the Margit Bridge to Buda and walked south along the river. Along the way we passed the Kiraly Baths. It’s one of the oldest bath houses in Budapest and was built by the Ottoman Turks in 1565. We were only permitted to see a small portion of the inside but it had very interesting looking architecture.
After walking for four miles we finally arrived at the bottom of a large hill upon which the Citadel is located. The path up wound around the hill alternating stairs with inclines. There were many places to stop and enjoy the view. At one point the path led to a beautiful monument in honor of Gerard of Csanád, which can be seen overlooking the river from the Pest side. Csanád was appointed the first bishop of Hungary around 1030 AD. Tired and hot we finally reached the summit.
(View from the Summit)
The Citadel, built in 1851, is a fortress that was intended for the defense of the city. In 1947, during the communist era, the Soviets placed the Liberty Statue there. It is one of the highest points in the city and it can be seen for miles. Most Soviet era statues have been removed to Momento Park but this one has been allowed to remain. It has been repurposed to represent liberation from the Soviet regime.
(Liberty Statue)
On the far side of the fortress there is a park where food vendors and trinket sellers pray on unsuspecting tourists. We had lunch there. We ordered a dish consisting of grilled peppers, onions and large hunks of pork. It was quite tasty.
(Grilled Peppers, Onions and Pork)
We walked down the hill using the road that the tourist busses take and headed to the Rudas Bath. We weren’t able to see much there so we continued on toward the Gellért Hotel and Bath.
The Gellért Bath is a beautiful complex. It’s decorated in the Art Nouveau style with high domed ceilings and stained glass windows. Everything about the place said clean, modern and high class. Like most bath houses they also offer optional services such as massages, pedicures and facials. If we had our swimming trunks with us we would have jumped in the water right then and there (you can rent a bathing suit but you can imagine Deb’s thoughts on that).
By now we were pretty tired so we walked across the Szabadság Bridge and took the riverside tram back to Margit Bridge. It was a short walk back to our apartment from there. Deborah was exhausted from the day’s activities but I decided to head back over to City Park and relax at the Széchenyi Baths.
The Szechenyi Bath is one of the largest in Europe. It features over a dozen thermal pools of varying temperatures, three outdoor pools, steam baths and much, much more. I dipped my toes into just about every pool but spent most of my time in the pools with the warmest temperatures. I could only stand about five minutes in the steam room before leaving and didn’t even consider using the cold dunk pool afterwards (it is recommended).
The outside pools are very large and can accommodate hundreds of people. The younger people seemed to congregate there. For some sitting in lounge chairs was their afternoon’s activity while others played in the pools and snapped photos of their friends. Most were drinking wine and beer from the poolside restaurant. It reminded me of spring break in South Beach.
Distance walked: 12.6 miles and 32 flights
Monday, May 14
For the second day in a row we walked over to Buda. This time we crossed the Széchenyi Bridge and took the funicular to the top. The funicular is one of the most famous attractions in the city. It opened in 1870 but was completely destroyed in World War II. It wasn’t rebuilt until 1984. It cost 2,400 HUF / $9.10 for the two of us to take the one minute ride to the top. We found the view to be somewhat restricted. If you have the time and don’t mind climbing a few stairs we would recommend skipping the ride. You’ll get much better views along the way and, of course, find the best view from the top.
Fun fact: The famous operatic song entitled Funiculì, Funiculà was written in 1880 to commemorate the opening of the funicular at Mount Vesuvius in Italy. It was used in advertising campaigns and quickly became a runaway hit in its own right. Until we visited in 2016 we always assumed that it came from some obscure opera. We’ll bet money you’ve heard this one before: Listen Here.
As an aside, one of the things that has surprised us is how many EU countries don’t use the EURO as their currency. As a matter of fact, most of the countries we plan to visit in 2018 use their own currencies. Here in Hungary they use a currency called the FORINT which us usually abbreviated as HUF. It’s taken us a little time to get used to it. One HUF is equivalent to about 0.00379 U.S. Dollars. That’s a hard calculation to do in your head! Rather than using a calculator we tend to think of it this way: 1,000 HUF is roughly $4.00.
Forint were introduced in 1946 as a way to stabilize the economy in the aftermath of World War II. As Hungary transitioned to a market based economy after the fall of communism the country experienced periods of hyper-inflation which accounts for huge difference in foreign exchange rates. Once they had coins for denominations that were less than a single Forint (pennies, nickels, dimes) but they no longer exist. The smallest denomination that we’ve seen is the five Forint coin which has a value of less than two cents. It’s startling to buy opera tickets for 12,000 HUF until you realize that it’s just $39.00.
Once at the top of Buda Hill we walked over to the National Archives where we planned to take the 11:00 am tour. We saw many people touring the building but at that time there were only two people interested in the English language tour. We got a private tour! Our guide was an archivist who had previously worked at the Hungarian Embassy in New York City. He enjoyed reminiscing with us about his time in Manhattan. The National Archives building was built in the neo-Gothic style and is just over 100 years old. The designers toured Europe looking for a style to model their building after and decided to mimic one they had seen in France.
(National Archives Building – Note The Beautiful Roof)
Each floor’s interior walls are covered in allegorical secco paintings, which our guide explained to us in detail. We also saw several research rooms, libraries and storage vaults. Their oldest document is a royal letter dating from the 11th century. Hungary’s king signed their version of the Magna Carta just seven years after the English. Unfortunately no original survives but they have a copy from the late 13th century.
(Allegory of Hungarian Magna Carta)
After a lunch consisting of a lángos covered in sausage we walked over the Széchenyi Bridge and headed to the Chocolate Museum near the Parliament building. The museum had some interesting displays on the history, manufacture and packaging of chocolate over the years. At the end they had samples of white, milk and dark chocolates. Naturally they had a gift shop with many interesting items for sale but instead we had coffee and dessert at a nearby cafe. We tried another classic Hungarian dessert: somlól galuska. It’s made with three different kinds of sponge cake (plain, walnut and chocolate) and has raisins and walnuts. The entire thing is drizzled with dark chocolate rum sauce and topped with whipped cream. It was quite good but was very filling. The two of us struggled to finish one serving.😊
(Hungarian Sponge Cake: Somlól Galuska)
Afterwards we headed to the street we had nicknamed as antique alley. We perused about a dozen shops. We liked the ones that specialized in porcelain, figurines and serving sets the best. We walked away with our wallets in tact.
Back at home we finally opened that bottle of Hungarian wine we bought last week. It was a red wine made with a grape called Kadarka. These grapes are mainly from the Szekszárd region and have long been a favorite of local wine makers. The taste resembled a Pinot Noir. We killed the entire bottle.
Distance walked: 6.7 miles